---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
---It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.

I had actually read Lanza's book a couple years ago, as I have much sympathy with the idea that biology informs physics (and that physics codependently informs biology.) The headline for this article is deceptive, though-- I don't recall a definitive 'proof' in the book that quantum physics shows biology ultimately informs physics, but that some experiments can be interpreted to suggest as much. If there was an actual proof, then it would be undeniable. Considering the book was published years ago, it appears as though the article is tabloidesque tripe.

Last edited by Viscid on Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Lanza cites the double-slit test, pictured, to backup his claims. When scientists watch a particle pass through two slits, the particle goes through one slit or the other. If a person doesn't watch it, it acts like a wave and can go through both slits simultaneously. This means its behaviour changes based on a person's perception

This is false and it seems a common misinterpretation. It changes based on being detected BY A MACHINE. There is no special place for consciousness or human perception to make the current theories in quantum mechanics work. Perhaps Lanza himself words it differently than this short article, but either way it would only be a guess, certainly no proof by any definition of the word proof.

Edit: I googled a bit and found this on Lanza's own site.

Consider the double-slit experiment: if one “watches” a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that allow it pass through both holes at the same time. Why does our observation change what happens? Answer: Because reality is a process that requires our consciousness.http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/f ... -wont-die/

This is nothing more than a wrong understanding of quantum physics, perhaps combined with wishful thinking. Again, it is the detector APPARATUS (aka machine) that changes the behavior of particles in a double slit experiment. The apparatus (for example a light source) changes the momentum of the particles (for example the electrons) in such a way that the wave-behavior is not measurable anymore. There is absolutely no reason to assume consciousness has anything to do with it and you can even prove it doesn't by running the experiment without a person looking at the measurement results of the slits. The wave pattern will still be broken nonetheless.

reflection wrote:
This is nothing more than a wrong understanding of quantum physics, perhaps combined with wishful thinking. Again, it is the detector APPARATUS (aka machine) that changes the behavior of particles in a double slit experiment. The apparatus (for example a light source) changes the momentum of the particles (for example the electrons) in such a way that the wave-behavior is not measurable anymore. There is absolutely no reason to assume consciousness has anything to do with it and you can even prove it doesn't by running the experiment without a person looking at the measurement results of the slits. The wave pattern will still be broken nonetheless.

There are certain ideas that would benefit from being unlinked to quantum physics. Consciousness as an essential ingredient of reality is one of them. Quantum physics is often presented in a way that makes it unclear the extent to which it's a separate issue. The newspaper piece also mentioned this idea of all times coexisting in a timeless way that merely seems to have a passage of time because of our perspective. This is another idea that really should be addressed separately.

I want to point out here that what makes the interference fringes go away is not the way that the environment (in this case the measuring instruments) disturb the particle going through the slits, but the way in which it affects them. The presence or absence of the particle can in principle be detected with however little disturbance to the particle itself, and according to quantum physics the fact that the measurement apparatus has been put into a fully distinct state still stops the interference effect from occurring.

Just to avoid possible confusion here, when I say "fully distinct state" I mean what in quantum theory is called an orthogonal state... (yes, at right angles, in a "state space")! If there is an observation that one can make of a system that tells you with certainty whether it was in a state A or a state B, then A and B are orthogonal. A particle of light that is vertically polarized is completely distinguishable from a particle of light that is horizontally polarized, i.e. the two states are orthogonal, but it is only partially distinguishable from a particle of light that is just like it is but polarized at a 45 degree angle from vertical. Any test that can be passed by one of them has at least a 1/2 chance of being passed by the other one. So basically, if the apparatus has experienced such a change as you could call its actually registering which way the particle went, then this full distinction between the two pathways has occurred.

It's possible to have a scenario which falls partway between the two that we've described so far, in which the particle has an effect on its environment that falls short of making it possible reliably to tell whether it happened or not, and in those cases the interference effect is partially degraded, to an extent depending on how close the resulting states are to be being distinguishable.

There have been some good experiments about this kind of stuff lately, and so far quantum theory has been confirmed every time.

reflection wrote:
This is false and it seems a common misinterpretation. It changes based on being detected BY A MACHINE. ...

Yes, I think the good Professor should stick to the field that he's an expert in. At the quantum scale there are phenomena that seem odd from an every-day understanding of the world. Figuring out how to interpret some of these phenomena is tricky (though the calculation, at least in this case, is straightforward). Invoking conciousness is not necessary to explain such experiments mathematically and seems to me to simply add unnecessary baggage to the explanation.

reflection wrote:
This is false and it seems a common misinterpretation. It changes based on being detected BY A MACHINE. ...

Yes, I think the good Professor should stick to the field that he's an expert in. At the quantum scale there are phenomena that seem odd from an every-day understanding of the world. Figuring out how to interpret some of these phenomena is tricky (though the calculation, at least in this case, is straightforward). Invoking conciousness is not necessary to explain such experiments mathematically and seems to me to simply add unnecessary baggage to the explanation.

Mike

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

reflection wrote:
This is nothing more than a wrong understanding of quantum physics, perhaps combined with wishful thinking. Again, it is the detector APPARATUS (aka machine) that changes the behavior of particles in a double slit experiment. The apparatus (for example a light source) changes the momentum of the particles (for example the electrons) in such a way that the wave-behavior is not measurable anymore. There is absolutely no reason to assume consciousness has anything to do with it and you can even prove it doesn't by running the experiment without a person looking at the measurement results of the slits. The wave pattern will still be broken nonetheless.

There are certain ideas that would benefit from being unlinked to quantum physics. Consciousness as an essential ingredient of reality is one of them. Quantum physics is often presented in a way that makes it unclear the extent to which it's a separate issue. The newspaper piece also mentioned this idea of all times coexisting in a timeless way that merely seems to have a passage of time because of our perspective. This is another idea that really should be addressed separately.

I want to point out here that what makes the interference fringes go away is not the way that the environment (in this case the measuring instruments) disturb the particle going through the slits, but the way in which it affects them. The presence or absence of the particle can in principle be detected with however little disturbance to the particle itself, and according to quantum physics the fact that the measurement apparatus has been put into a fully distinct state still stops the interference effect from occurring.

Just to avoid possible confusion here, when I say "fully distinct state" I mean what in quantum theory is called an orthogonal state... (yes, at right angles, in a "state space")! If there is an observation that one can make of a system that tells you with certainty whether it was in a state A or a state B, then A and B are orthogonal. A particle of light that is vertically polarized is completely distinguishable from a particle of light that is horizontally polarized, i.e. the two states are orthogonal, but it is only partially distinguishable from a particle of light that is just like it is but polarized at a 45 degree angle from vertical. Any test that can be passed by one of them has at least a 1/2 chance of being passed by the other one. So basically, if the apparatus has experienced such a change as you could call its actually registering which way the particle went, then this full distinction between the two pathways has occurred.

It's possible to have a scenario which falls partway between the two that we've described so far, in which the particle has an effect on its environment that falls short of making it possible reliably to tell whether it happened or not, and in those cases the interference effect is partially degraded, to an extent depending on how close the resulting states are to be being distinguishable.

There have been some good experiments about this kind of stuff lately, and so far quantum theory has been confirmed every time.

Fig Tree

Hi,

Nice post, except I don't understand "The presence or absence of the particle can in principle be detected with however little disturbance to the particle itself". This is not true according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

But this would turn into a discussion about QM. I'm no expert (just know some basics) and this is not my intention in this thread, so Ill leave it at this.

reflection wrote:
This is nothing more than a wrong understanding of quantum physics, perhaps combined with wishful thinking. Again, it is the detector APPARATUS (aka machine) that changes the behavior of particles in a double slit experiment. The apparatus (for example a light source) changes the momentum of the particles (for example the electrons) in such a way that the wave-behavior is not measurable anymore. There is absolutely no reason to assume consciousness has anything to do with it and you can even prove it doesn't by running the experiment without a person looking at the measurement results of the slits. The wave pattern will still be broken nonetheless.

Interesting point, though I'm not sure the distinction between the process of observation and than the presence of an observer is clear cut.

Spiny Norman wrote:I mean would these natural patterns have any meaning without an observer?

Meaning is a totally different discussion. The theory of biocentricity goes so far as to say that time/space would not even exist in the absence of consciousness. I see no evidence to support that bold assertion.